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Streaming TO the Tivo

I know their have been plenty of recorded streams of video from the tivo to the pc, but thats not what i'm interested in. I'd like to be able to play my video files (mpeg1, mpeg2, divx, etc...) on my tivo...and i want to do it by streaming the files over a network (wired or wireless)...i figure that if its just a linux box you could mount the network drive and play off of their...but i'm sure there is ALOT more too it. if anyone has done this or knows how to...PLEASE let me know.

You can only upload files to a Tivo that were originally recorded on a Tivo. The files have to be in tmf format. Tivo uses a unique file format that is not a standard mpeg2 format. The mpeg files it produces are known as ty files. A tmf file is simply a ty file broken up into segments along with a txt file that has the program title, description, etc. There is a utility called mfs_ftp that allows you to transfer files to and from a Tivo in tmf format using a regular FTP program like Smart_FTP. You can transfer tmf files between Tivos using mfs_ftp, including transfer between standalone Tivos and DirecTivos, but only if the DTivo ty file does not have a Dolby Digital soundtrack (SA Tivos can't play these). There's an ongoing thread on the topic in the Extraction forum.

Please don't PM me or any other members looking for personal assistance. You'll do better by posting (after you've exhausted the search feature, of course) and taking advantage of the collective expertise of the membership instead of a single individual that may or may not be able to help you. Thank you and enjoy your stay at DDB!

Is there any way to convert to that format on the fly so that I can have my video files in whatever format (mpeg2 i guess), sitting on my PC and then have Tivo read and convert those files in real time?

The Series 1 SA tivo chip can play mpeg 1 and 2 but not divix. You can stream from a PC to unit, I had released a program a while back to allow file from a replayTV to be played on a tivo. (The highest quality setting of tivo and replay programs could not be streamed, but can be buffered for playback.)

On the tivo, you need to kill or stop the tivo proesses. Then seperate the mpeg data into the audio and video stream either on the tivo or a PC and dump the stream to the correct /dev entries. (mpeg0a and mpeg0v)

Open source projects like vplay or playitsam should provide some clues to what you are looking for. The portions of the code I wrote that you might be interested in (PlayBack and PCPlay) are priotary and were not released for legal reasons. The source for opensource OSD routines for control of the tivo display from a PC were released.